The Tombs of Atuan

Book Title: The Tombs of Atuan

Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

Series: Earthsea Cycle #2

Date Started: May 10th 2020

Date Completed: May 11th 2020

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Stars

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

The Tombs of Atuan was surprisingly short but had a whole lot of information packed in. This series seems to be gradually exploring its world with epic-like tales from different corners of it, and that's exciting. I will say that it's very good (just one of the cornerstones of modern fantasy, you know), but in a detached way, honestly. It feels like myth; it feels like something out of time and place (in terms of how it was written) and like a folktale that has always been. There's something magnificently spellbinding and confounding about that.

The Earthsea Cycle is famous for its worldbuilding, and there are few fantasy worlds as rich as this (and I've read a heap of fantasy, trust me). The idea of being fascinated by your own world is clearly what drives every step of Le Guin's stories - she points it out herself in her afterword. That's something we don't often get in modern novels, I guess in part because we're very attached to having our 'protagonist' that we come back to every time. And having an anchor in a central character is storytelling 1.1. It's fascinating, then, to read Le Guin's work which pivots on protagonists from book to book in order to show different perspectives, cultures and stories. Ged, the hero of A Wizard from Earthsea, is involved in The Tombs of Atuan but without having to be the protagonist. His presence is comforting and exciting, but I was no less invested because I had to get familiar with a new heroine at the heart of the book.

I mentioned in my review of the first book how interesting it was to read Le Guin's own afterword, written several decades after the book had been published. This was the case once again, raising some elements I hadn't necessarily considered while reading. It's true, this is a story that shows a heroine who needs help from a man to succeed - something that we criticise these days in post-(post?)-feminist terms. But it's also true that Arha, or Tenar, has to access her bravery and find an outlet of power for herself that actually does empower her. It's the reality that often in oppressive societies something has to be given from outside to introduce the idea of something new, and isn't taking that new information and processing it to succeed still a very personal and challenging thing for each individual? This was written in the 60s, remember, but it's still very relevant, partly because, perhaps, it's not trying to be perfect in its metaphors. It's just a story. Whether you can learn from it or not is a side effect.